Diablo III: Monk Guide

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Considering playing a hard-hitting, fist-flying monk in [app=4089]Diablo III[/app]? Bane Williams has all the details on how to plan, what gear to look for, and what skills work best together.

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[vcatkiller]

Wow thanks for this, interesting read. I just started a monk recently so these tips should come in handy.

[brimlad]

very good read, thanks. been playing monk currently at level 27 and in a group I have no trouble haven't died once, but by myself I've been getting into trouble especially with those ranged monsters; time of need I'll definitely try that and I didn't know you could heal your ally, thanks.

cheers

[BurntToast]

Im on the right track then.

[Bane Williams]

very good read, thanks. been playing monk currently at level 27 and in a group I have no trouble haven't died once, but by myself I've been getting into trouble especially with those ranged monsters; time of need I'll definitely try that and I didn't know you could heal your ally, thanks.

cheers

No worries! I would have focused more on the early stages of Monk, but as you're pretty aware it is fairly easy! It only starts getting challenging for the Monk in hell, and of course bosses, but that is usually not build dependant and more knowing the bosses attacks dependant.

[gmcleod]

I'm pushing 37 with my monk. I use Serenity with the healing rune, as well as Mantra of Healing with Sustenance, and Transcendence to keep my life filled right up while tanking. I love using Seven Sided Strike, but reading your article makes me think I should look into Sweeping Wind and it's various effects.

Currently using Deadly Reach with the rune that adds 50% armour. My skills lean towards survivability, and my gear is leaning towards DPS, which I think is fine for now, but you're making me think I'll have to shift further towards survival later.

I think I'll also change Fleet Footed to Pacifism

[tranquil]

Nice guide, good to see articles like this pop up on GON.

I've been running a similar build, i switch between Mantras though depending on the fight. I'm still in Nightmare so i've just been using Conviction for the extra damage, and usually switch to Evasion + Hard Target for bosses. I haven't found the need for the extra healing from the healing mantra and Transcendence yet, I reckon that will change in Hell though.

Also i'm liking Crippling Wave over the other generator skills at the moment, with Mangle & Conviction it does insane damage. Crippling Wave also works well using the Concussion rune and the Resolve passive, stacks up to -45% damage dealt by enemies.

I've always had BoH, Serenity & Cyclone Strike on my bar. Serenity with the heal is awesome, i think it breaks CC aswell.

Seven Sided Strike is great for single target damage and a few seconds of immunity, i usually have it for boss fights, then swap it back with either Mystic Ally or Sweeping Wind. I like Mystic Ally because i'm lazy and sometimes forget to pop Sweeping Wind =P

I can see Pacifism making its way to my build later on for sure.

[Syncourt]

Any idea why my monk seems to have lower damage duel wielding?

Last night I swapped out my staff for a 1-handed axe but when I put a spiked fist weapon in his off-hand, his total DPS actually went down instead of up.

[Bane Williams]

Any idea why my monk seems to have lower damage duel wielding?

Last night I swapped out my staff for a 1-handed axe but when I put a spiked fist weapon in his off-hand, his total DPS actually went down instead of up.

Well your DPS is averaged, you will attack first with one hand, then with the other, so the game figures out a kind of average between the two. With similar DPS'd weapons you will see an increase, any kind of imbalance however will not work out very well.

[phewcha]

My monk is Lvl 39, spent some money in AH to get some fists, changed my skills and started dying regularly on nightmare. End of act 2 and I had only died 5 times at this point, after suggestions I died about 5 times in 10 minutes. Dont know what I am doing wrong.

[revengous]

My monk is Lvl 39, spent some money in AH to get some fists, changed my skills and started dying regularly on nightmare. End of act 2 and I had only died 5 times at this point, after suggestions I died about 5 times in 10 minutes. Dont know what I am doing wrong.

review how you play.

I was dying a lot, so I tweaked my wizard skills to get more freeze/crowd control, suddenly I wasnt dying any more

[Matt 'El_Funko' Long]

Any idea why my monk seems to have lower damage duel wielding?

Last night I swapped out my staff for a 1-handed axe but when I put a spiked fist weapon in his off-hand, his total DPS actually went down instead of up.

This is the best explanation I've read for how the game treats dual wielding vs 2 handers vs single weapon:

While the system seems complex at first glance it is actually really simple.
Dual-wielding averages the dps of your two weapons and adds 15%.
Two-Hand is just straight dps.
One-hand plus shield is just straight dps.

Applying that can take a tiny bit of math, but it is still simple:
If the weapons you're dual wielding have a DPS discrepancy greater than 15% you will do more damage with a shield than with using the second weapon.
If your two-hander DPS is 15% higher than the average of your one-handers you'll do more damage with the two-hander.

Also factor in that your shield can carry a large chunk of stats. Those can quickly bridge that 15% DPS gap going from dual-wield to sword/board.

The only real complexity comes from skills and is slightly different for skills with and without cooldowns. This part I'm still not 100% clear on, but I think you should mostly focus on just raising that DPS number until you really understand how different attack speeds and base damages interact with the various spells you use. As I understand it, a non-cooldown spell scales best on attack speed (which is the only thing limiting you from casting it again ASAP). Cooldowned spells also have faster cast animations with higher attack speed, but they do more damage per cast with higher base damage.

I dual-wielded pretty much all the way to Hell thinking I'd lose a lot of DPS if I switched to 1handed+shield. After reading that post and testing stuff out, I realised if I found a high DPS, fast attack speed 1 hander I could maintain a similar DPS to dual-wielding while getting the added benefits of blocking stuff with a shield. Now I die far less often in Hell mode.

Well, that and I found out about all the completely broken and OP monk abilities to abuse before they get hot fixed.

(Cheap) Monk Tip #1: Use Fists of Thunder with Quickening (Critical hits generate 15 spirit) and Sweeping Wind with Blade Storm (increased damage per stack). Quickening generates 15 spirit from any critcal hit, not just the ones from your punches. Watch as Sweeping Wind crits everything around you and generates so much spirit that you can't mash buttons fast enough to drain it.

This will definitely get hotfixed in the near future, so we might as well abuse it before we lose it.

(Slightly less cheap) Monk Tip #2: Try Exploding Palm with Essence Burn (enemies with the DoT who die explode and spread the DoT to nearby enemies) and watch it set off chain reactions amongst enemies for huge kill streaks. I've got as high as 260 kill massacres from chaining explosions together. Works very well with Barbarian AoE.

Monk Tip #3: In regards to how to be tanky, besides the standard standard stuff like "get vitality" and "use lots of dex with Sieze the Initiative passive to build armour", a nice trick is to make use of the One With Everything passive. It's fairly easy to collect a set of +dex/+vitality gear that also has a bonus to one type of resistance. For example, if you stack 300 fire resist and then use your passive to spready that 300 to all your resistances - suddenly those molten/desecrator/arcane enchanted elite mobs aren't as big of a problem anymore.

One other thing to remember is that Monks in a party of 4 play very differently to solo Monks. Anyone saying they never need to use Mantra of Healing probably hasn't played with squishy little Demonhunters and Witch Doctors going up against Hell mode Belial. Suddenly the Monk's variety of group heals become vital.

[Syncourt]

Ah ok, thanks for the explanation

So I have to hope that I can find a second weapon within at least 15% range of the other weapons damage otherwise it's pretty much useless. Hmm.. bit harder to do so far than it sounds though unfortunately. I'm having trouble at the moment even finding one single handed weapon that deals anything more than 40% less damage compared with my current 2-hander staff.

[Theyleon]

A tactic I've been liking lately (in late nightmare) is to use a high spirit generating build to spam whichever mantra I'm using, to keep the 3 second double benefit going. Used with transcendence it also gives a constant stream of heals, and having +48% damage to everything with conviction, or constant strong heals and mini-shield from healing with boon of protection is amazing in a group.

[Matt 'El_Funko' Long]

Ah ok, thanks for the explanation

So I have to hope that I can find a second weapon within at least 15% range of the other weapons damage otherwise it's pretty much useless. Hmm.. bit harder to do so far than it sounds though unfortunately. I'm having trouble at the moment even finding one single handed weapon that deals anything more than 40% less damage compared with my current 2-hander staff.

I've found it's way easier to buy what you need from the auction house. Farming is just way too time consuming for how random the weapon drops can be.

Get gold by playing through the quests and vendoring every item you don't want (or auctioning something semi-decent), then buy the items you need by finding good deals for stuff on the auction house.

If you go into the auction house and search for 1h weapons by using the filtering options you can really narrow down the results. Set the item level around your current level, choose the stats you want from the drop down boxes and use the very bottom right filter option to limit the results to everything under say 30k, you can find some nice stuff at reasonable prices. Sort by DPS and hunt away!

Just be quick to click Buy-out if you find something that's really good. With millions of people playing, I've lost count of the number of times I've ummed and ahhed over an item for a few seconds and then found it's already been sold when I finally clicked to buy it.